On Comparing Survival Curves with Right-Censored Data According to the Events Occur at the Beginning, in the Middle and at the End of Study Period

Abstract

In clinical practice the event of interest does not always occur equally across the study time period. Depending on the disease being investigated, the event that is of interest can occur intensively in different periods of the follow-up time. In such cases, choosing the correct survival comparison test has importance. This study aims to examine and discuss the results of survival comparison tests under some certain circumstances. A simulation study was conducted. We discussed the result of different tests such as Logrank, Gehan-Wilcoxon, Tarone-Ware, Peto-Peto, Modified Peto-Peto tests and tests belonging to Fleming-Harrington test family with (p, q) values; (1, 0), (0.5, 0.5), (1, 1), (0, 1) ve (0.5, 2) by means of Type I error rate that obtained from simulation study, when the event of interest occurred intensively at the beginning of the study, in the middle of the study and at the end of the study time period. As a result of simulation study, Type I error rate of tests is generally lower or higher than the nominal value. In the light of the results, it is proposed to re-examine the tests for cases where events are observed intensively at the beginning, middle and late periods, to carry out new simulation studies and to develop new tests if necessary.